


The Chest of Ordinary Things & Extraordinary Circumstances

by coffee_deer



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Gen, it's just the beginning tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 21:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13749531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_deer/pseuds/coffee_deer
Summary: After standing on guard of the Vault and teaching students for seventy years, the Doctor suddenly finds a chest he doesn't remember having. And yet, it belongs to him - and it's filled to the brim with ordinary things... and extraordinary circumstances.[This is just a premise. The idea is - I want to write as many stories about different Doctors and companions as I can, but to do so I sort of need your help. Give me an object, something that the Doctor could find in his chest - and I'll use it and build a story around it. Play with me, pretty please? And I'll do my best not to fuck up.]





	The Chest of Ordinary Things & Extraordinary Circumstances

_Time._

The clock was ticking, counting time, seconds, minutes, hours, and it had counted them beyond measure since its first day here. The Doctor didn’t put it on the mantelpiece the very first day he got the office to himself – not even the first year, so it wouldn’t be able to share his upcoming 70th anniversary in this darned university. But still, it had managed to count a lot.

What did it matter, though?

He hadn’t done much with that time. All those seventy years, sitting on his arse in one place, under Nardole’s scrutinous watch… And not only his, actually, for there were reasons apart from sheer sentimentality why two photo frames and a stuffed raven occupied his desk.

He missed River but she also reminded him that love _is_ a promise and promises you must keep.

He missed Susan but she also reminded him what happens when you don’t keep them.

He wished he could miss Clara… but the raven much like the one that had taken her from him was here as a reminder, too: sometimes, there is no choice and you simply have to be brave enough not to run away. Besides, the raven served well as a medicine for his notorious impulsivity; its macabre look alone (and the bitter lack of memories attached to it) had discouraged the Doctor from taking someone else’s warm and trusting hand and running away to the sunset, a dozen of times at least.

Of course, it hadn’t been easy. He’d gone astray, once or twice, and there was no point in denying it. You couldn’t just leave a space and time junkie next to their means of travel and hope for the best. Annoyed and exasperated, Nardole even suggested to ask Time Lords for help one day – if they had successfully exiled the Doctor to Earth in the past, surely they could be so kind and do so again.

But of course that wasn’t an option and Nardole knew it as well as the Doctor. Their mission was to _hide_ the Vault, not to advertise it with flyers and loudspeakers. So, in the end, Nardole usually just pursed his lips into a thin line and shoved a tea tray on the table with force so that the cutlery would make angry noises at the Doctor in his stead.

The Doctor was grateful to Nardole for that. For his rebukes, his tediousness… and care, too. For being, basically, his more than a half-android, bald and clearly not blood-related mom.

The Doctor was fairly sure that he wouldn’t have been able to keep not-going-anywhere trick for so long without Nardole. The decision to assemble a new body for his head and take him away from Darillium was probably one of the best ones the Doctor had ever made. In this life, for sure.

That said, sometimes he did wish with all his hearts for his “mom” to be less intrusive and nosy.

Nardole clearly felt that the TARDIS was his territory in all her entirety no less than she was the Doctor’s. He had rummaged through the wardrobe categorizing and throwing away things without notifying the owner. He had already reorganized two thirds of the library and, as the result, the Doctor wasn’t able to find Mary Shelley’s diary for nearly two years. He was also infuriatingly sound at the matter of every intrusion he’d made – so the Doctor always had to agree with him eventually, although begrudgingly. The wardrobe _was_ overstuffed. The library _was_ a mess. No need to be so defensive, Doctor.

Most of the times, the Doctor had to admit, Nardole did understand what he needed even if didn’t seem that way at first. It took time to learn to trust him - but time they had aplenty (tick-tock tick-tock from the mantelpiece) and now Nardole basically just did what he deemed necessary and the Doctor usually let him while mysteriously maintaining the aura of being in charge.

However…

However, the chest.

The chest just appeared one day, as if out of nowhere; the Doctor sneaked into the TARDIS during the lunch break to hunt for some orange marmalade and here it was - not the marmalade, the chest - sitting on the floor of the console room, its presence as surprising and a bit eerie as of a stranger in the house. It was large and heavy-looking, this chest, dark brown, almost black. The Doctor didn’t recall having it, let alone putting it right behind the console, so the first thing he did was:

‘Nardole! _Nardole!_ ’

His voice echoed through the console room, flew along the stairs and got lost somewhere in the corridors. No one caught it.

‘Well. The answer will have to wait then,’ muttered the Doctor under his nose. Not that he was going to let the chest just sit there, looking all mysterious, until Nardole’s return. The Doctor eyed the chest with suspicion that masked anticipation and hunger for wonders he tried so hard not to indulge. The marmalade quest had already been forgotten.

Slowly, carefully, he approached the chest - like an explorer would a rare and dangerous animal, like a kid would a big present box they didn’t know the occasion for. While its lid remained shut, it contained endless possibilities and that illusion was almost too sweet to break. And yet…

The Doctor was hardly ever the patient one.

So, he sank down right next to the chest, legs crossed, and touched the lid feeling leather and wood and _secrets beneath_ under his fingertips. Oh, what a shame it would be if all there was was a collection of old hats! He could only hope for the best - and for the just: after seventy years of abstinence, he deserved something, _anything,_ better than some moth-eaten headgears.

What would it be?

He felt a stir, a movement in his memories, vague and uncertain, like a breeze. Before his own mind could ruin the moment by a sudden revelation, the Doctor leaned forward and pushed the lid open.

It fell back with a thud. The very second it did, the Doctor _remembered_.

The chest was his, alright, and it was he who had stuffed it, not with the secrets of the Universe nor with the dusty old hats.

Filling the chest almost to the brim, were memorabilia: ordinary things, or most of them at least, but with extraordinary circumstances connected to them. Some pretty extraordinary people, too. The Doctor smiled. The chest didn’t surprise him but he wasn’t disappointed at all. Sitting there, inhaling air of the past, the Doctor suddenly felt like taking a walk down the memory lane.

With the warm smile still playing on his lips, he reached out and took the first thing out of the chest.


End file.
